Reviews

I think this book would be best suited for a younger audience. There is a lot the students can do with this– reflecting, artwork, and writing prompts! It’s a very inquisitive book that has the potential to bring up lots of deep questions for students. Providing them with outlets like writing and drawing would be super beneficial!

Summary:

This story takes the reader through a journey of realizing and understanding just how important and impactful nature is for the people and animals who call it home. It talks about puffs of cotton and how they snuggle people, how trees used to stand tall and now we sit at them. The author really takes the reader through everything in nature and illustrates it in such a unique, beautiful way. At the end, the author sort of ends with an action statement for the readers. They encourage people to use the possibilities of the outdoors and play. To not feel embarrassed about using your imagination and to allow yourself to play and enjoy it.

Review:

I really loved the images and how they showed that the space around us is so much bigger than we could have ever imagined. That we really are just small things part of God’s greater plan. When the author talked about trees and how they used to stand tall and what we do with them now, the illustrator exemplified this by having the young girl sit in a wooden chair when trees reflected off of them. I think this was such a cool and unique way to show students the purpose of the story. The author used a really great adjective to describe how people feel the outdoors in everything we do. This would be a great story to pull vocabulary words from. I think this story would be a great lesson in private school about what God has done though His people to craft what we have now. On the other hand, it would be a great way to stir questions and offer a deeper understanding of the world for a public school. This story brings up hard, interesting topics without specifically using biblical words. I think sometimes people can forget how special nature is, and so for adults this was a good reminder to stop taking the earth for granted.

mat_tobin's review against another edition

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5.0

What a beautiful picturebook. I have read a lot of stories now that touch upon nature-deficit disorder and the loss children suffer when separated from the natural world and its denizens but this is beautifully done and still brings a sense of freshness to the telling through both Underwood's slim narrative and Derby's gorgeous washes of colour and use of perspective.

Told over the shoulder of a young girl (although perspective can shift with the outside looking in at times), this is an ode to what we have lost in staying indoors or journeying by car. It is the language of the outdoors that Underwood champions here 'sunbaked smells' tempt us as does it 'chirps' and 'rustles' too. The colours and sounds of the outside are always there waiting and often find ways of creeping into our homes too.

This is a gentle invitation to remember to step outside whilst standing a distance away from any saccharine literature that can romanticise the natural world.

calistareads's review against another edition

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5.0

WOW!!! How I love this artwork. This artwork was amazing and it made me feel so much. It was powerful and was intimately intertwined with the story. This was so brilliant. I feel this should have actually won the Caldecott and not only been a nomination.

This had power. I spent 4 years studying acupuncture and medicine and the core of our medicine is that we are part of nature. The more we divert from nature and separate ourselves, the more our health suffers. The starts out showing our separation from nature and then it begins showing all the ways that nature is still there and calling to us.

This book hit all my feels. I want to own this stunning book. The artwork is watercolors and its almost an abstract feeling of nature all over the place that is stunning. I would love to have frames of some of this artwork. I just love it. This book stunned me and I simply want more of it. What it did was amazing and shows how we need nature. I can't say enough.

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